The Rajaniemi, Yu, and Tregillis are all first novels. First novels made another strong showing recently when the 2011 Nebula short list was announced (see below). None of the first novels overlap between the two lists.

Overall it looks like a strong list. I’ve only read two of these so far: Dervish House and The Quantum Thief, which were both quite good. Time to get back to the to-be-read stack.